1. Pretty much. Get good at photography and build a portfolio. This will take years.

2. Hard, especially if you're looking to get hired by anyone other than your current friends/aquaintances. It would be much easier to work for someone else.

3. It's pretty time-consuming, but you can make decent money. Tonybhall (one of the mods in this forum) takes photos at kids soccer and baseball games, plus a little paintball, and (iirc) he said he made over $1000. But he dedicates a LOT of time to it, and he does it almost every weekend... Keep in mind that if you take photos for 2 hours, you'll probably spend like 3 hours editing.

4. Totally and completely.

5. You can go to school, but not too many people do. If you're looking for a career, the best thing is to major in business and minor in photography.

6. $1200 to $1500.

Thank you for taking the time to write out your questions in a grammatical manner. If you had said "lawls i wana take pics n get paid!" I would have generally flamed/trolled the thread...